Cambodia III

Postcard showing the National Museum in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. The Museum was open in 1920 by the French colonial government and houses the world's largest collection of Khmer art. It was shut and abandoned during the Khmer Rouge period from 1975 to 1979. When it was reopened, the roof had rotted in places and it housed a huge colony of bats which were only able to be completely removed over the course of some 15 years.

Stamp issued in 2001 commemorating the 80th birthday of then King Sihanouk.

Cambodia II

Super cute postcard of kid riding a water buffalo through Cambodia rice paddies. Nice to see a postcard from Cambodia that's not of Angkor Wat for once. – Not that I have anything against Angkor Wat; it's amazing. But it's always nice to see a non-picture-postcard, non-tourist-site side to a country.

A couple of older stamps on this card. On the left, stamp from 1999 set of seven on birds, featuring the European greenfinch, Carduelis chloris. Two stamps on right from 1997 set of four on the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus.

Cambodia

The famous temple of Angkor Wat, shrouded in mist. Angkor is pretty well-known, but I'll add that, interestingly, a team of researchers recently concluded that Angkor had been the largest preindustrial city in the world, with a population of up to one million and an elaborate system of infrastructure connecting an urban sprawl of at least 1,000 square kilometres to the temples at its core. In comparison, Angkor's closest rival, the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, was between 100 and 150 square kilometres in total size.

Stamp showing a carving from the Banteay Srei temple complex located in the Angkor area. The temple was built in the tenth century and is renowned for its intricate and well-preserved carvings.